mself. "Such a system,"
says Havelock Ellis, "is obviously more in harmony with modern
civilised feeling than any system that has ever been set up in
Christendom."[301]

Monogamy remained imperative. The husband was bound to support the
wife adequately, to consult her interests and to avenge any insult
inflicted upon her, and it is expressly stated by the jurist Gaius
that the wife might bring an action for damages against her husband
for ill-treatment.[302] The woman retained complete control of her
dowry and personal property. A Roman jurist lays it down that it is a
good thing that women should be dowered, as it is desirable they
should replenish the State with children. Another instance of the
constant solicitude of the Roman law to protect the wife is seen in
the fact that even if a wife stole from her husband, no criminal
action could be brought against her. All crimes against women were
punished with a heavy hand much more severely than in modern times.

Women gained increasingly greater liberty until at last they obtained
complete freedom. This fact is stated by Havelock Ellis, whose remarks
on this point I will quote.

"Nothing is more certain than that the status of women in Rome
rose with the rise of civilisation exactly in the same way as in
Babylon and in Egypt. In the case of Rome, however, the growing
refinement of civilisation and the expansion of the Empire were
associated with the magnificent development of the system of
Roman law, which in its final forms consecrated the position of
women. In the last days of the Republic women already began to
attain the same legal level as men, and later the great Antonine
jurisconsults, guided by their theory of natural law, reached
the conception of the equality of the sexes as the principle of
the code of equity. The patriarchal subordination of women fell
into complete discredit, and this continued until, in the days
of Justinian, under the influence of Christianity the position
of women began to suffer."[303]

Hobhouse gives the same estimate as to the high status of women.

"The Roman matron of the Empire," he says, "was more fully her
own mistress than the married woman of any earlier civilisation,
with the possible exception of a certain period of Egyptian
history, and, it must be added, the wife of any later
civilisation down to our own generation."[304]

It is necessary to